They are in the twilight of their careers, yet desperately trying to stay connected to the changing world of the kids they lead.

On the recruiting trail, their rivals assail them for their age and the well-known fact that they won’t be coaching too much longer.

Still, Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno keep plugging away – two of the best coaches in history, neither with anything left to prove, both hanging in there while they struggle to find anything that would satisfy them more than being on the football field.

Paterno, 76, is entering his 38th season as head coach at Penn State. With 336, he has more victories than any major college coach.

Bowden, 73, is heading into his 28th season at Florida State. His 332 victories rank second.

“I don’t know why, but I have no desire to retire,” Bowden said. “There’ll be a day when that will change. It will come from losses.”

Losses have been building at Florida State – nine over the last two seasons – and so have the problems. Gambling allegations involving quarterback Adrian McPherson and a few odd slips of the tongue have fueled the long-held belief that Bowden is little more than a titular head of a program running amok.

Before last season began, Bowden declared “Let’s roll” would be his team’s slogan for 2002. It was supposed to honor the passengers on Flight 93 who took action against Sept. 11 hijackers after hearing Todd Beamer’s call for action. It came off, to many, as a misguided effort to make football seem as important as life and death.

Just as Bowden was overcoming that public-relations problem, he twice in postgame interviews declared the Notre Dame offense to be like “serial killers; they kill everyone the same way,” in the aftermath of a 34-24 loss. This came at a time when snipers were shooting and

killing 13 people over a three-week period in the Washington area.

“Bowden, it appears, is losing a grip on his team – and perhaps his program,” columnist Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel wrote after the Notre Dame loss.

The coach didn’t help his image when, in interviews with police, he insisted he had no recollection of conversations a few months previous about the possibility that McPherson was gambling.

His critics, a small group that has grown dramatically as the Seminoles have lost more games in the last two seasons than they have in the previous six, had trouble believing he was either a) that forgetful; or b) that detached from the program he built and defined over more than a quarter decade.

“For the rest of my career that’s going to be part of it, ‘He’s too old,”‘ Bowden said. “You get that everywhere you go.”

Especially on the recruiting trail, where opposing staffs aren’t above using the potential lack of stability at a program as a specter for impressionable teens to worry about.

It didn’t help Paterno when Penn State lost 14 of 20 games during a span in the 2000 and ’01 seasons. But the Nittany Lions rebounded last year for a 9-4 record, quieting those who insisted that “the game was passing him by.”

Despite last season’s rebound, Paterno hinted that he might begin facing his age issue head-on. Earlier this year, he suggested he might step down after 2006.

When he decides, he says he might begin the process of choosing his successor.

“So when we’re out recruiting, a kid can identify with the people that he would be with maybe his sophomore and junior year,” Paterno said. “I want to be fair.”

Of course, to every rival that uses age against the old coaches, there is an effective reply. Who else, after all, commands the respect of a Bowden or Paterno when they walk into the living room?

“Every school tried to use that, ‘He’s not going to be around X number of years,’ things along those lines. But he’s a walking legend, and you have to be here to play with him,” Penn State quarterback Michael Robinson said.

How much longer will they be there to coach?

While Paterno can see the end, Bowden is less committal.

Unspoken by any aging coach is knowledge of the way it ended for the man they spent years trying to catch: 323-game winner Bear Bryant.

“Quit coaching?” Bryant said late in his career. “I’d croak in a week.”

In fact, he died 37 days after his retirement – a bit of history Bowden and Paterno surely must acknowledge when they ponder their plans for the future.

“There isn’t anything in my life anymore except my family and my football,” Paterno conceded not too long ago. “I think about it all the time.”